Danes order a double
Danish Brewery Group has bought two breweries and a stake in a third from Brok-Strzelec Polish Breweries in a deal worth zł.135.5 million.
The Danish company bough two sites in Koszalin and Jędrzejów, as well as a large share of the Perła brewery.
Brok, which has just two percent of the Polish market, will welcome the deal with some relief - for several months the company lacked funds for beer production and failed to meet its financial goals for 2004. Instead of a promised zł.4.6 million net gain, it reported almost double that in the red, with an zł.8.3 million net loss. The transaction will allow Danish Brewery Group to quickly establish itself in Poland's regional markets and, according to some analysts, to start production of its flagship Faxe beer in Poland.
International players, such as SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg, dominate the Polish market, with foreign capital controlling more than 90 percent of domestic production. The three largest brewery chains account for some 87 percent of total beer sales. Small regional brands are what remain, but without large-scale distribution or marketing as a regional specialty, their fate seems bleak.
Some analysts say that the struggle between SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg leaves little room for the much smaller Danish Brewery Group, but the CEE region is lucrative for foreign firms. For Heineken, owner of Żywiec Group, Poland is the second-most-important market with 10.3 million hectoliters of sales, outpaced only by Spain. The Dutch mega-brewer grew by more than 50 percent in the CEE region last year, compared to a small decrease in turnover in Western Europe.
In its report Heineken says it intends to expand further as: "Central and Eastern Europe is one of the world's largest beer markets by region. Many markets have below-average per-capita consumption."
Although Poles drank an estimated 8.3 liters of pure alcohol each last year, they still fall behind their western European rivals, who downed nine liters. Increasingly, however, Poles are opting for a cold lager over a shot of vodka.
"Over the last decade we saw a major cultural shift," says vice-president of Case Advisors, Michał Górzyński. To some extent Poles turned their back on vodka, although the country still provides the world's fourth largest demand for this spirit, after Russia, Ukraine and the US. Sales of wine almost doubled to 1.4 liters of pure alcohol per capita in 2004, but the clear winner was beer (4.3 liters last year). And, according to a recent Case report, this rising trend will prevail over the next five years. In effect, vodka distillers have gradually increased the share of exports in their revenues to almost 4.5 percent last year, while beer makers export below one percent.
The Danish company bough two sites in Koszalin and Jędrzejów, as well as a large share of the Perła brewery.
Brok, which has just two percent of the Polish market, will welcome the deal with some relief - for several months the company lacked funds for beer production and failed to meet its financial goals for 2004. Instead of a promised zł.4.6 million net gain, it reported almost double that in the red, with an zł.8.3 million net loss. The transaction will allow Danish Brewery Group to quickly establish itself in Poland's regional markets and, according to some analysts, to start production of its flagship Faxe beer in Poland.
International players, such as SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg, dominate the Polish market, with foreign capital controlling more than 90 percent of domestic production. The three largest brewery chains account for some 87 percent of total beer sales. Small regional brands are what remain, but without large-scale distribution or marketing as a regional specialty, their fate seems bleak.
Some analysts say that the struggle between SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg leaves little room for the much smaller Danish Brewery Group, but the CEE region is lucrative for foreign firms. For Heineken, owner of Żywiec Group, Poland is the second-most-important market with 10.3 million hectoliters of sales, outpaced only by Spain. The Dutch mega-brewer grew by more than 50 percent in the CEE region last year, compared to a small decrease in turnover in Western Europe.
In its report Heineken says it intends to expand further as: "Central and Eastern Europe is one of the world's largest beer markets by region. Many markets have below-average per-capita consumption."
Although Poles drank an estimated 8.3 liters of pure alcohol each last year, they still fall behind their western European rivals, who downed nine liters. Increasingly, however, Poles are opting for a cold lager over a shot of vodka.
"Over the last decade we saw a major cultural shift," says vice-president of Case Advisors, Michał Górzyński. To some extent Poles turned their back on vodka, although the country still provides the world's fourth largest demand for this spirit, after Russia, Ukraine and the US. Sales of wine almost doubled to 1.4 liters of pure alcohol per capita in 2004, but the clear winner was beer (4.3 liters last year). And, according to a recent Case report, this rising trend will prevail over the next five years. In effect, vodka distillers have gradually increased the share of exports in their revenues to almost 4.5 percent last year, while beer makers export below one percent.
